In recent years, personal computers and other data processing devices have been used in an environment allowing access to a plurality of printers. For example, a system that has a plurality of data processing devices connected to a plurality of printers via a network may be set up so that each of the data processing devices can access each of the printers. With this system, virtual devices corresponding to the printers are registered in each data processing device so that the user can specify which of the printers is the output destination.
By registering a plurality of virtual devices in the data processing device, the user of the data processing device can select a virtual device as the output destination from a list of the virtual device names. However, the user cannot print on a printer corresponding to the virtual device selected from the list if the power to the corresponding printer is not turned on or if the corresponding printer is out of paper, for example.
When this happens, the user can select another virtual device from the list to print the data on a different printer, but this method requires the user to perform extra operations in order to change the output destination. Further, the printer corresponding to the new output destination may also be inoperable due to the power not being turned on or the printer being out of paper, forcing the user to perform still more annoying operations.
One data processing device disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-85132 addresses this problem by acquiring status data from the printers and switching the default printer based on the acquired status data. This data processing device can switch the default printer to a different printer if the current default is set to a printer that is not powered on or is out of paper, thereby reducing the potential for problems in printing to the default printer.